Stanford University is investing in MathCrunch, an on-demand mobile math tutoring company, with its StartX Fund.

MathCrunch will use the investment to enhance the quality of tutoring sessions on its platform, add more advanced product features and grow its fleet of tutors to accommodate its rapid growth.

The company is focused on helping students gain the confidence and skills they need to succeed at math by providing one‐on‐one live tutoring to students via chat on their mobile phones — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In its first year alone, MathCrunch surpassed 100,000 student sign‐ups and completed over 200,000 successful mathtutoring sessions.

“MathCrunch utilizes mobile chats, the preferred communication platform of today’s young learners, into a service that can help them excel academically,” said Naguib Sawiris, Founder and CEO of MathCrunch. “What sets MathCrunch apart is not simply our ability to connect students faster, but also that we invest heavily in the development of our tutors, and incorporate the most effective teaching techniques to serve various learning styles and needs of our students. ”

MathCrunch offers a 360-degree tutor rating system, whereby tutors are reviewed both by students and by senior tutors who evaluate the tutors teaching performance on a ninepoint system and provide in‐depth feedback. In addition, MathCrunch is introducing a new image markup feature that allows students to draw on the photo of the problem they submit. This mimics a virtual whiteboard for both students and instructors, creating for a more interactive and efficient dialogue.

MathCrunch’s new subscription model will allow its service to be more accessible and affordable. Subscribing to MathCrunch enables students to connect to tutors faster with priority matching, and saves users as much as 33 percent compared to their pay-as-you-go pricing. MathCrunch’s subscription pricing starts at $23.99 for 60 minutes of service per month, $44.99 for 120 minutes, and $79,99 for 240 minutes. MathCrunch offers sessions lasting as short as 10 minutes and as long as 2 hours.

Students snap and send photos of their math problems through the app and are connected to a highly-trained, professional tutor within minutes.

Math anxiety is a widespread problem that prevents students from understanding the material and reaching their full potential in school. MathCrunch was founded to address the serious achievement gaps that plague our educational system, especially when it comes to math, by making personalized, one‐on‐one learning available to students anywhere, anytime, via their smartphones.